Swim Coach's Past Haunts Florida

November 14, 1993|By Mike Dame, Orlando Sentinel.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The lips of University of Florida administrators still are sewn tighter than the stitches on a baseball, but a review of the recent dismissal of women's swimming coach Mitch Ivey speaks volumes.

Indications are Ivey was dismissed largely in an act of damage control, not because of current indiscretions with the swimmers.

Ivey, 41, was fired Oct. 25 for what Gators swimmers were told was sexual harassment of his athletes. But the swimmers have said publicly they did not complain about Ivey's behavior nor witness any actions they considered inappropriate.

Instead, they point to Ivey's spotted past as reason for his ouster, which raises questions about why Florida hired Ivey in the first place. For his part, Ivey said last week that he did nothing wrong and has been sacrificed so the school can protect its image. He could not be reached for comment for this report.

This begins as a story of second chances. Ivey got his opportunity in 1990, when Ann Marie Lawler decided to hire him as women's coach at Florida despite knowing he had previous romantic encounters with his swimmers.

"At the time I made the decision, I felt comfortable with the decision," said Lawler, who along with other officials now admits she made a mistake by hiring Ivey. "In light of everything that's happened, I may have made a different choice if we had known everything that we know now."

Make that what the world knows now.

A recent ESPN report painted an unflattering portrait of Ivey as a world-class swim coach who got sexually involved with his athletes, some under the legal age for consent, and verbally abused others to the point of constituting sexual harassment.

ESPN's investigation prompted an internal review of Ivey's job performance by the school's legal counsel that was limited to Ivey's behavior at Florida. That investigation led to Ivey's dismissal.

It was a decision top-ranking school officials said they had to make "in the best interests of the university," but they would not elaborate.

Of course, the school could have made the decision to retain Ivey, a young star on the international coaching scene. But that could have backfired.

"Everybody would congratulate you until it was discovered that you made a decision you didn't believe was the right one, because you were more concerned with winning than doing the right thing," President John Lombardi said. "That's what gets you in trouble with these programs."

The ESPN show disclosed embarrassing details of Ivey's life and behavior that evidently were common knowledge in swimming circles:

- While coaching at the club level in California, Ivey, then 29, began making advances toward one of his 15-year-old swimmers, Noel Moran Quilici. She said they began having sex when she was 17, which led to an abortion. They got married when she was 18, only to separate and divorce after six months when she caught him having sex with a 17-year-old.

- When he was 33, Ivey began a relationship with 16-year-old swimmer Suzette Moran. The two got engaged when she was 17, but Moran broke off the engagement after she graduated.

A former Florida swimmer, identified as Lorraine Perkins, told ESPN that Ivey repeatedly heaped verbal abuse on her and uttered numerous sexual slurs to her.

Perkins said she went to Lawler with her accusations about Ivey in 1991. Lawler said university administrators looked into the accusations and found that it was an isolated incident that did not warrant dismissal.

Why then, two years later, would similar allegations lead to Ivey's ouster?

Answers have not been forthcoming. Florida administrators would not discuss findings of the recent investigation. The report is not public record because it is considered evaluative material, which is exempt from Florida's Sunshine Law.

There's also the matter of why Lawler disregarded knowledge of Ivey's past relations with his swimmers when he was hired.

Donna Lopiano, a former associate athletic director at Texas, said she spoke with Lawler about Ivey's reputation when he became a candidate for the Florida job. Lopiano had declined to hire Ivey earlier because of his past.

When Ivey applied at Florida, he also came highly recommended, Lawler said, particularly by Randy Reese, Florida's swim coach from 1977 to '90. Ivey also was engaged at the time for a marriage that lasted only two months and had shown signs that his past mistakes would not be repeated.

For those reasons, Ivey was hired, and for three years it looked like a brilliant gamble. He led the Gators to three Southeastern Conference championships, a second-place NCAA finish last year and consecutive third-place finishes in 1991 and '92.

The decision certainly turned sour, heaping another serving of negative publicity on the Florida athletic program.